2022, now that WAS a year.

It's been a year of mixed fortunes, and one I'm both glad and sad to have ended.

Gaming highlights: I went to UK Games Expo, Gen Con, hosted Tabletop Scotland, ran lots of games, published Horror in the Highlands, got back into board gaming at East Neuk Tabletop, and went to Dragonmeet for the first time. Compare that to any year and it's a damn good set of things.

Gaming lowlights: I missed AireCon, had to cancel lots of RPG sessions and my writing took a long detour. All largely down to issues with my ears.

As I look forward to 2023 those same issues with my ears have returned.

This is not a good thing.

Having had months of not-fun at the start of the 2022 I don't really want a repeat of that so fingers crossed the wonders of medicine come to my rescue in 2023.

But this isn't Dave's Health blog, it's a tabletop gaming one. So let's get that on track.

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The normal approach for these posts is to have a review of my Objectives & Principles, although I note I didn't do one in 2021.

These are the pillars I set in place when I started this blog way back when.

Objectives	Principles
1. Balanced gaming although originally this was Sustainable and regular gaming.	1. Only buy it if you’re going to use it
2. More gaming overall	2. Is everyone having fun? Including you?
3. More involved	3. Accept that you’re going to be the GM
4. Event Attendance	4. Change is a good thing and is necessary
5. Organise Events	5. Opinions aren’t as important as knowledge and experience

As things stand they're still very relevant and I suspect any fine tuning would largely be cosmetic. But sometimes that's what you need to refocus.

If I was to write them today though it'd probably be more in the form of user stories.

1. As a gamer I want to play games regularly with lots of different people.
2. As a gamer I want to engage with and be engaged by the hobby and communities around that.
3. As a gamer I want to both attend and organise events, including conventions.
4. As a gamer I intend to only buy something if I'm going to use it.
5. As a gamer I want to make sure that everyone at the table is having fun, including me.
6. As a gamer I accept that I will GM more games than I will be a player in, and I'm happy with that.
7. As a gamer I recognise that Change is a 'good and necessary thing', particularly when it comes to new editions of games.
8. As a gamer I value knowledge and experience more than I do opinions.

Hmmm, that's technically two less but gets the same point across.

So what do I call them? Objectives? Not really. Principles? Well kind of, but they could equally be labelled as all sorts of things. 

Wait... I've gone off on a tangent, I'm supposed to talk about where I am in meeting them.

Ok, so let's do that against these new ones.

1. I play RPGs regularly with the same people (ears aside) and board games regularly now that ENT is back up and running. I would like to play more RPGs with more people though. That's a development opportunity for 2023 I suspect, not least because we're coming to the end of the D&D AL Avernus Rising campaign so I'll have a game slot to replace with something.
2. I think I do this well. I have plans for 2023 that I can't share yet which will expand on this somewhat I suspect.
3. Having Tabletop Scotland back is a big part of this one, and I've now chalked Dragonmeet off the 'must attend' list. The plans I allude to in 2. above might mean going to more events but if there's one thing that's clear is that I don't currently have the capacity to organise more conventions. Not if I want to continue to write and run weekly games that is.
4. So this isn't quite where it needs to be. I bought a lot of stuff at Gen Con that I haven't played yet, although it's offset by a bit of a purge of stuff in the Tabletop Scotland Bring & Buy. I think the main thing here though is using the RPG stuff I've got for both in-person and online games. Retaining that Tuesday night slot every week (ears permitting) and ideally adding a _once a month_ bonus session whether in-person or online would be great for this.
5. Yep, still doing this well. Particularly evident with the return of ENT I think.
6. Still happy with that. I am getting invites to play more and more these days which is very nice and much appreciated. I think from a scheduling perspective I'm far better at doing that when I'm the GM, which is absolutely fine. I probably do need to play more though.
7. Particularly poignant given all the chat about ONE D&D right now. The fake or even completely inexplicable outrage from the fan base never ceases to amaze me. The test of any edition change is only really possible when it's in front of you and you're playing. It'll either be for you or it won't. If it isn't then you can keep playing with what you have, or try something new.
8. Aligned to 7 a bit here, but as ever I don't really care what others say about a game. I'm very happy to make my own judgements on things based on actual experience...  Same applies to most things in life after all.

So, yeah here we are approaching the end of 2022 and in my next post I hope to not be talking about ears. Instead I want to talk about a new project for 2023.

I hope everyone reading this has a fabulous festive period and that I see you all in some capacity in the New Year.